National Guard brought back with plan for 84,000 recruits

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after a security meeting of senior ministers at the Elysée Palace that more than half that final number (44,000) are already earmarked to provide support to the police.

The remaining 40,000 will come under military command.

France already has 56,000 reservists who dedicate 90 days of service a year for which they receive a basic stipend.

Some of the first 4,000 additional volunteers are already in training in the hope of joining the volunteer Garde Nationale when it is officially formed.

President François Hollande met some of them during a visit to a gendarmerie school in Tulle, where he renewed the government’s call for recruits.

He called on people to mobilise: “I want to tell the French people how important it is to engage in the ranks of the operational reserve of the gendarmerie, the police and the army.”

A total 4,000 additional police and 4,700 police reservists were deployed last month to top-up security during August festivals, although fears forced some events to be cancelled.

President Hollande had earlier said that a total 15,000 reservists would supplement existing forces of law and order over the summer.

Mr Hollande announced the formation of France’s first volunteer National Guard in more than 150 years following the Bastille Day lorry attack in Nice, which claimed the lives of 85 people and injured more than 300.

He said this additional part-time security force would be composed of volunteers from existing operating reserves, in­cluding the police and military.

He was echoing a call from Mr Cazeneuve who, in the days immediately after the attack, urged ‘all willing French patriots’ to join a volunteer force.

Within days, some 2,500 people had expressed an interest in joining, with ‘more coming forward every day’, the interior ministry said.

These were said to include the Front National’s MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.

Parliament will discuss the plan this month, with a view to setting it up as quickly as possible, Mr Hollande said.

Some politicians had been calling for the re-creation of a reserve military force since the November 2015 attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed.

In January that year, the capital was on high alert for three days after 12 people were gunned down in the offices of magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Less than a fortnight after the atrocity in Nice, a priest was murdered when two men stormed a church near Rouen as he was performing mass.

Any able-bodied French national aged between 18 and 65 and who is free of a criminal record can apply to join the Garde Nationale. Applicants will be interviewed and must pass a medical examination.

France last had a national guard in 1872. It was believed to be 600,000 strong when it was disbanded.